News

People’s Marathon Mission Bay Auckland March 23rd 2024

By CoachKev | Published 8 April 2025 | No Comments

Sean MacBride-Stewart Race Report

Weather: air temp at start 14°C and at end 23°C; water temp 19°C, sunshine, no cloud with a light breeze

Race course: swim 3 laps around 500m triangle of buoys, ride 4 laps of a 10km waterfront road (start finish half way along the loop), run 2 laps of one of the waterfront legs used in the bike ride.

I have been planning to visit my parents in Auckland for many months and realised this triathlon was on the first weekend of my visit. This has been my motivation to train over the winter and most importantly work on my swimming, so for the last 6 months or so I have been trying to get to the 3 club swim sessions as much as I can.

For the race that training paid off. Although the time of 38:26 would suggest otherwise I was in the middle of the pack coming out of the water rather than my usual of being at the back! The swim was rather chaotic and at times felt like I was in an industrial washing machine but the good coaching kicked in and I held my nerve and my form to finish feeling strong. Swim:bike transition went smoothly and I am sure I could be faster but I was just chuffed to be out of the water earlier than a lot of the other competitors.

I had hired a 15 year old road bike (Cannondale CAAD9).

I was obviously slower than many others and with drafting allowed it made for interesting moments as groups of riders on the better bikes wizzed past. The tension on the course was amplified by the added peril of much slower cyclists doing taster events – this was a “People’S Triathlon” so there were 13 events being run simultaneusly. There were several crashes and 2 badly injured riders (I think both the serious crashes were due to dogs getting under the bikes). After 2 laps I eventually managed to get on the back of a group and they pulled me through the next 2 laps to the bike:run transition. Ride was 1:19:39 (30km/hr).

The run was slow but I always knew that would be the case.

I definitely felt better on the second leg. I also realised I was giving all I had because when I was passed with 200m to go I was only able to maintain my position for few seconds before realising I didn’t have anything left to push on. Run was 58:31

.
So on reflection I immensely benefitted from the swimming training and I will definitely be prioritising the swim sessions in the future. In terms of an event it was well run, the weather was very kind and doing it at the end of summer meant the sea was like a tepid bath – what’s not to love about that!